CD & EA 1.9 - The Hard Way

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-Plum

Vikker drove the van on a long, meandering route around the city's outskirts, past the abandoned, burned-out sections of town south and west of the still-thriving areas. Despite how Helios had built-up the city center over the last decades, many of the one-time suburbs and rougher parts of town had slowly been dying as people migrated into the arcologies and up to the Phoenix megacity a couple of hours north.

Juliet drove through some areas like this on her way to the scrapyard every day, but it was different at night, different with a crew like Vikker’s, and different after she’d come to grips with the idea that she was a criminal. Now she saw the long stretches of roads with no lights and no traffic as havens—the likelihood of being recorded or stopped by corpo-sec very unlikely at this time of night.

They slowly crept around the city and made their way up into the western hills, and Juliet took in the view of downtown. It glowed and flickered with a million LED and faux neon advertisements and lights, and Juliet thought it was beautiful, at least seen from a distance like that. “Juliet, I’m gonna park the van in my garage, and then Don can take you down to get your ride. That cool? My place isn’t far, near the Jan Corp. pit mine.”

“Yeah, that’s fine.” Juliet didn’t think she had a choice, so what was the point of making a fuss?

“Um, no offense, Juliet, but we’ve only done one job together. I need to protect my identity, so I’ll need to black out your vision for the last part of the trip, k?”

“You serious?” Juliet looked at Ghoul, but the woman was out, her head lightly bouncing against the side of the van. She tried Don, but he just shrugged and held out a pair of goggles.

“Put these on, doll. Vikker will control the opacity. When we get outta here in my ride, I’ll take ‘em off ya.”

Juliet snatched the goggles, suddenly feeling alone, vulnerable, and very annoyed. “After what we went through, huh?” she huffed and then took off her specs, hooking them in her shirt collar. The goggles looked like what you’d wear around a motorcycle helmet with dark lenses, but Juliet could see the digital display on the plastic, letting her know they were more than they seemed.

She pulled the thick, elastic band over her head, yanking her ponytail out through the top, and when they were snug over her eyes, they beeped, and everything went dark. “You guys better not be fucking me over.”

“Nah,” Vikker said. “You’re good, don’t worry. A couple more jobs, and I’ll have you over for a party—show you around my place.” His words were followed by a short-lived, high-pitched buzz.

“Juliet,” Angel said, “Our access to the satellite network has been blocked.”

“Yeah,” Juliet subvocalized, “They don’t want me to know where Vikker lives yet, I guess.” She sat back and sighed, resigned to being treated like an outsider for a while. It sucked, but she couldn’t really blame them; it wasn’t like they knew much about her. It wouldn’t be that hard for a corpo-sec agent to pretend to be a new operator to get inside info about people like Vikker’s crew.

The van hummed along, its high-end stabilizers doing quite an excellent job of masking the road beneath them. Still, occasionally it would lurch, indicating rough roads or tight turns, and Juliet knew Vikker lived in the sticks. Twenty minutes later, the van slowed to a stop, softly humming as it idled. Juliet heard the door open, and then Don said, “Come on, Juliet. Here’s my hand, just by your right arm. Take it, and I’ll guide you to my ride.”

Juliet reached out, felt his hand, and grabbed onto it. She momentarily entertained the idea of yanking off the goggles and looking around, but then she’d have to deal with that fallout, and if she really wanted to earn these peoples’ trust, that probably wasn’t the move to make. She felt very powerless, though, so much so that her heart began to race, and her breaths grew quick and short.

“You’re all right, girl,” Don said, his voice low and friendly, and he gently pulled her down from the van, and she felt gravel crunch under her feet. Then he was tugging her along, saying, “My ride’s just a bit this way, in Vikker’s garage. He’s got a hell of a garage, Juliet—lots of expensive tools. When you get closer with the gang, he’ll let you use ‘em any time. I’m always out here tinkering on my ride.”

“What kind of ride you got?” she asked, trying to steady her breathing.

“It’s an old truck, a Donner four-fifty. I’ve done a lot of modding on it over the years,” he said, and while he spoke, his voice changed, echoed more, and she realized he’d stepped into the garage. He tugged again on her wrist, and something made Juliet resist. “Come on, Juliet,” he said, pulling again. Juliet didn’t like the feeling in the pit of her stomach, so she reached up toward the goggles. Before she could touch them, though, she felt a sting in her neck and heard a *hiss*, and then she was falling toward the ground, suddenly very heavy.

“Ugly business,” she heard Don say, his voice strange and slow, echoing around in her audio implants.

“Juliet,” Angel said.

“Ugly, but necessary. No way an F-grade rookie should be able to pull the shit she did in there. Not without a deck, not without a lot more hardware than she let on about. She’s either a plant, or she’s got some tech worth more than we can let walk away.” Vikker’s voice was cold, business, mercenary. Juliet felt strong hands grab her ankles. She tried to kick out, to swing her fists, but the most she could muster was a soft exhalation.

“Ghoul’s gonna be pissed,” Don said.

“She’ll get over it. She’s too quick to fight and too quick to trust. This is the right call. I put Ghoul to bed, anyway. She thinks you’re on your way down the mountain.” Juliet felt the gravel turn into something hard and flat, and she continued to slide along it as someone kept pulling on her ankles.

“Juliet,” Angel said again, and Juliet tried to answer, tried to subvocalize, but she couldn’t control even the base of her tongue—nothing was working right. Angel seemed to hear or at least understand that Juliet was trying to speak, so she said, “I can hear what’s going on around you, Juliet, so I know you’re in terrible danger. I don’t have any connections available, though—your teammates are still employing a jammer.”

“Ungh,” Juliet managed, squeezing and contorting her body with all her might, barely managing to force a little air out of her windpipe.

“Relax, Juliet,” Vikker said. “Your autonomous functions will keep going—your heart’s working, your lungs are minimally functional. You’re not going to die. We’re going to do a little research and maybe mess around with your tech, but we don’t plan to kill you. Not unless we figure out you’re working for corpo-sec.”

“I believe he’s lying, Juliet,” Angel said. “If you survive and spread the word about their double-cross, their operator rating will plummet, especially if Dr. Tsakanikas takes up your cause. I believe you’re about to be robbed and then made to disappear.”

Juliet inwardly railed, screamed, and tried to thrash her body, but all she could manage was to increase her breathing rate slightly and squeeze out a couple of tears.

“I might have a solution,” Angel said. Juliet couldn’t answer her, but she tried; she tried to ask her to tell her what it was. Angel continued, “I’m connected to your nervous system rather intimately. More than a commercial PAI. I believe I can speed your metabolism for a time, processing the paralytic agent they injected you with more quickly than they anticipate.”

“Do it,” Juliet tried to subvocalize, but she knew it was garbled.

“This process will bear risks for you. You could suffer permanent nerve damage and risk a cardiac episode, among other lesser possible complications. If you want me to proceed, please try very hard to make a consenting sound, Juliet.”

With all her might, with every ounce of her concentration, Juliet tried to force her lungs to take just a slightly deeper breath, and then she pictured herself squeezing every muscle in her torso, and as the air came out her throat, she managed a wheezing, airy, “Yesssss.”

“Hah, that’s the spirit, doll,” Don said, chuckling. “She really wants to work with us, Vik.”

“Quiet, Don. Get her up on the table, and I’ll have a look at that data port.” Two more hands scooped under Juliet’s armpits, and then her stomach lurched as they swung her into the air to land on a hard surface with a clang. “One thing’s for sure; these specs are worth a few bits.” A faint tickle under her chin told Juliet one of the men was taking her Aurora specs off her shirt collar. She heard them clatter onto a metal counter behind her head.

“Flip her over, so we can get at her data port,” Don said, and that’s when Juliet realized his objections to Vikker’s actions were complete bullshit. Her body was so numb, her mind so foggy, that it wasn’t until Juliet was face down on the metal surface that she began to notice the changes in her body.

Juliet was sweating profusely, and her heart was hammering in her chest, and, despite the effects of the drug, her breaths were coming fast and shallow. It felt like she was running a sprint while she lay still, and her mind began to spiral into a panic at the strange sensation.

Juliet began to fear that Angel would push her too far, that she’d kill herself before Don and Vikker had a chance to do it. “The fuck’s going on with her? She stroking out?” Vikker asked.

“Bad reaction to the injection, I guess. Maybe she’s got an allergy. She’s gonna punch her own ticket for us, Vik.” Don’s voice was steady, calm, even slightly amused.

“Fucking hurry up then. She might have a deadman switch on her implants—plenty do in this business.”

“Can’t rush this too much—same thing’s true of tech yanked out without permission. I gotta analyze this chip and figure out what we’re dealing with.” Juliet felt rough fingernails dig around her synth-skin, exposing her data port, and then heard Don and Vikker breathing heavily as they leaned over her neck, staring at the exposed portion of Angel’s PAI chip.

“Yeah, I haven’t seen that model,” Vikker said. “Is that a WBD on the corner, there?”

“I think so. Yeah, I got a number here. Zoom in fifty x on the lower right corner.”

“Juliet, try to speak to me now!”

“Angel,” Juliet subvocalized, and she knew it was correct. She wanted to try to move, to wiggle her fingers and toes, but she forced herself to lie still. “I think it’s working,” she finished.

“Yes, we’re doing all right, I think we’ve processed a lot of the chemical, and your heart seems okay. They won’t be able to look up my chip or attempt to, anyway, without turning off their jammer or moving out of its range. Be ready to act, Juliet!”

“She stopped steaming,” Vik said.

“Yeah, I think she’s either dead or dying, boss.”

“Well, go look up that fucking chip. Hopefully, we aren’t too late. I’ll grab us a couple of beers and check on Ghoul.”

“Yep,” Don said, and then Juliet heard feet scuffling and thumping on concrete and a heavy door swinging open and closing with a *bang*.

“Now, Juliet! Move! It’s time to fight for your life!” Angel said, her voice so forceful it seemed like a shout, and Juliet pictured her like a valkyrie standing over her, screaming into her ear to get up, to fight. Grunting with the effort, she jerked her hand to her face and yanked off the goggles, flinging them to the side. She was in a galvanized steel building with twenty-foot ceilings and a few large white floodlights shining down on a concrete floor littered with tools, workbenches, and engine parts. “Move, Juliet!” Angel urged again.

Juliet forced her still-sluggish muscles to move and pushed herself up, rotating on her butt, so her long, jean-clad legs fell off the side of the table. She almost fell to the floor, but she managed to keep a grip on the table while her feet and legs grew steady. “Where to, Angel?”

“Pan around the room. I want to see what you have to work with,” the PAI commanded in lieu of an answer. Juliet complied, turning her head from left to right, making sure she saw every corner of the cluttered garage.

“Juliet, I’m highlighting a cabinet against the western wall, halfway to the door. It's the correct size and shape to hold guns.”

“Could I be that lucky?” Juliet stumbled toward the now-amber-highlighted metal cabinet. As she gained momentum over the floor, she found her muscles struggling to counterbalance the inertia. She stumbled forward, smashing a shoulder into the metal door, causing a resounding clanging sound. “Shit,” she hissed, grabbing the handle and trying to yank it to the side to unlatch the cabinet door. It didn’t budge. “It’s fucking locked!”

“Juliet, I’ve analyzed the scan of this room more thoroughly. There are dozens of keys hanging to your left, near the door.”

“Are they that dumb?” Juliet hurried toward the highlighted objects, and as she got within three feet, one of them began blinking in her AUI.

“That’s the only key of the correct type. Take it quickly, Juliet. I’m registering auditory distortions coming this way.” Was Angel telling her she could hear more with her auditory implants than Juliet could? She supposed it made sense—Angel could isolate sounds and dispassionately analyze them. Juliet was dealing with a biological body and everything going on with it: adrenaline, blood flowing, lungs heaving, heart pounding, panic, fear, and a host of other factors. She snatched the blinking key and hurried back to the cabinet. She’d put it into the lock and turned it when the door opened noisily, swinging wide.

“I’m not finding shit on this chip,” Don called out. Juliet turned ever so slowly and watched him come through the door. She froze when she realized he hadn’t noticed her yet and was looking at something on a thin datapad. “Vik?” he said loudly, then more quietly, to himself, “Still getting beers. I hope Ghoul didn’t wake up . . .” To Juliet’s amazement, he turned and walked back out the door, letting it slam behind him. She glanced at the table where she’d been lying and saw that a bundled tarp and a mounted belt grinder made it hard to see the surface from this angle.

“Lucky,” she breathed, pulling the cabinet door open. A small forest of black barrels stood up before her. Before she could say anything, one of them blinked with amber light in her AUI, and Angel started to speak again.

“That’s a Bosh & Royal semi-automatic electro-shotgun. It fires caseless projectiles with electromagnetic rails. Each time you pull the trigger, you’ll launch fifty, quarter-inch pellets at high velocity toward your target. It’s perfect for what you need to do, Juliet.”

“What I need . . .” Juliet started, wondering if she should just turn and try to run.

“Juliet, you cannot outrun these men. Don is highly enhanced for speed, more than his body can handle, in fact. You need to catch them by surprise. Quickly! Pick up the gun, and examine it. I’ll tell you if it’s in working order.” Juliet didn’t pause, didn’t deliberate any more; she just reached into the case and picked up the heavy black metal and plastic weapon.

The gun was bigger, bulkier than any firearm she’d seen up close. It had weird magnet-like things along its barrels, connected to each other with stiff, plastic-covered wires. The stock was heavy and dense, and Juliet wondered if it doubled as a battery. Sticking out like an inverted V, near the foregrip, were two metallic cylinders that rattled softly, like a snake’s tail, when she hefted the gun.

Her AUI lit up with more amber lights and words, indicating the parts of the weapon—trigger, safety, battery level, pellet counter, shot-size selector, front grip, stock, and sight. “Move to that red tool chest, Juliet, across from the door. It’s on wheels; push it so it’s directly in front of the door, about fifteen feet distant.” Juliet turned and saw the tool chest highlighted in her vision and an amber arrow indicating where she should push it.

“All right,” Juliet took the heavy gun and trotted over to the tool chest, pleased to realize her body was feeling more responsive. She kicked off the wheel brakes and wheeled the chest toward the spot Angel had indicated. When it was in place, she knelt on the concrete behind it, breathing heavily.

“Those men will return soon, and you must catch Don unawares, Juliet. This weapon has a ninety percent charge and has four hundred pellets loaded. See the displays? Dial the shot-size selector to the far right. That way, you’ll fire the full fifty pellets per trigger pull. This gun will not recoil much, so keep the barrel pointed at the door, resting on top of the tool chest, and fire every time it charges. You should be able to pull the trigger every one point two seconds. See the crosshairs I’m displaying in your AUI? Keep it on the person you want to shoot.”

“Angel, I don’t think I can do this. How do you know all this about the gun, anyway?”

“Of course, you can do this, Juliet. Do you want to die?”

“No, I don’t, but maybe I can threaten them, get them to let me leave.”

“If you don’t kill Don immediately, he will disarm you.”

Juliet knew she shouldn’t argue; she didn’t have time for it. Those assholes had her on a table and were laughing when they thought she’d died. “Fuck ‘em anyway,” she muttered, and lifted the heavy, knobby-barreled gun to the top of the tool chest and leaned over it, a finger on the trigger.

“Good, Juliet. Push the stock into your shoulder. Put your weight onto your left arm on the tool chest, gripping the forestock—the black plastic under the barrel. Use the crosshairs, Juliet. The gun is off safety, so, very carefully, pull the trigger back halfway; that will charge the rails.” Juliet followed Angel’s instructions, and when she pulled the trigger halfway, she felt it meet some resistance and paused as it hummed to life, surprisingly quiet. She’d expected it to start shooting electrical sparks out of its wires or something. Just a bit more than a second after she depressed the trigger, a green LED lit up near the front sight.

“It’s ready,” she hissed, guessing that green meant go. She leaned over the chest in that position for two or three minutes, and her back began to tighten, and her nerves began to fray, and finally, she subvocalized to Angel, “What the fuck are they doing?”

“They think you’re dead or near enough dead. They’re trying to figure out my chip’s ID number, but I obscured any links to that back when I had access to WBD’s network. They’re searching for a number that doesn’t exist. Even WBD doesn’t have my actual serial number anymore.”

“Oh shit. Nice one, Angel.” Just then, Juliet heard a bark of laughter from outside the door. She leaned forward onto her left forearm, sucking the butt of the shotgun into her shoulder and lining the virtual crosshairs Angel had created for her up on the center of the door. The handle depressed, the door started to swing open, and Juliet’s adrenaline-jittery finger cranked the trigger down. With a *zwap* and a hiss of gas, the shotgun launched fifty balls of steel-coated lead into the metal door, ripping a basketball-sized pattern of holes through the metal.

“You bitch!” Vikker screamed from behind the door, and Juliet fired again. The shotgun buzzed and bucked, and another spray of holes appeared in the door with a rapid cracking, pinging percussion. Juliet somehow felt more angry than afraid. Instead of feeling and acting helpless, small, and victimized, she felt like she needed to kick somebody’s ass.

“You fucking started this, Vikker!” She screamed, jerking the big gun off the tool chest and striding toward the door. She aimed lower this time, near where the door met the concrete. Before the steam, dust, and echoes fell away, she fired another round. This time, she was only seven or eight feet away, and the ripping retort of the gun and the clash of lead and steel with concrete and more steel made her auditory implants squelch down the sound.

As the sound faded to a distant rumble, she fired again, feeling almost like she was underwater. The surreal situation, the adrenaline, and the emotions made her feel like she was floating free from her body, watching herself act.

She watched herself reach out and jerk on the door handle, holding the shotgun upright with just her left hand. As soon as the door flopped past her, grinding over the roughed-up concrete, she jerked the shotgun back into her shoulder and aimed out into the night air. Don was splayed out on his back, his t-shirt shredded and caked in blood, directly in front of the doorway. Behind him, Vikker lay on his side in a dirt lot, not ten feet from his van, thick rivulets of blood leading from Don’s body to his, like a snail’s trail.

Juliet gingerly stepped over Don, hopping to the side to avoid most of the blood, and then stalked toward Vikker. He wasn’t moving, and Juliet saw that his left hand was gone, just a few bone shards sticking out from his wrist, and the backs of his legs and his ass were covered in bloody holes. Juliet figured she must have hit him in the hand with one of her first two shots, and then she’d finished him as he turned to run.

“Fucking assholes,” she sobbed, abruptly robbed of the strength provided by her outrage now that her aggressors were laid low. The electro-shotgun suddenly felt like it weighed a hundred pounds, and she let her arm fall to her side, barely keeping her grip on the plastic hilt that jutted out behind the trigger. Juliet took a step, unsure why or where she meant to go, and when that realization hit her, she fell to her knees, dazed, exhausted, and wrung dry from emotion.

“The fuck is going on out here?” a low, scratchy voice asked from off to Juliet’s right. A fresh burst of adrenaline snapped her out of her current funk, and she jerked her head to the sound and saw a brick ranchhouse on the other side of the drive. The wooden front door was open, illuminated with yellow light, and silhouetted by the light was Ghoul’s one-armed frame, leaning against the door jam.

“Ghoul, I . . .” Juliet began, standing up, and shifted the shotgun, so her left hand was under the barrel again.

“What the fuck is going on out here?” Ghoul asked, punctuating each word. She lurched, leaning away from the door jam and shakily standing straight.

“Your fucking partners were going to kill me for my gear!” Juliet barked, her outrage coming back to her. Her eyes began to water with the surge of emotion, her frustration, fear, and anger, all contending for her attention.

“They fucking what?” Ghoul took another step forward, coming into the light cast by the single, enormous, yellow floodlight hanging from the garage behind Juliet. Her face was wan, her truncated arm still caked in bloody first aid foam, and Juliet could plainly read the shock in her eyes as they darted from Juliet to the bodies and back again. “You killed them? You fucking killed Vik and Don?”

“Dammit, Ghoul, they drugged me! They were going to steal my tech! They were going to fucking make me disappear. Didn’t they say anything to you?” Juliet still hadn’t pointed the gun at Ghoul. She knew the woman was strong and fast, but not as fast as Don and probably not in her current condition. She still hoped she wouldn’t have to try to kill another person that night. “Check Don’s data pad if you don’t believe me! He was trying to figure out how to rip my PAI out without triggering a deadman!”

“Why don’t you put that fucking cannon down. How’d you kill Don? He’s a fucking assassin!”

“They thought I was dead! They thought they killed me with that injection! They left the garage, and I found this,” Juliet held up the gun, shaking it toward Ghoul. Then she finished, “I heard them coming back and blasted them through the door!” Juliet backed up a few steps toward Vikker’s van, gesturing the shotgun barrel toward Don. “Go on, see if you can confirm any of this. I don’t want to hurt you, Ghoul, and I don’t want you to kill me!”

Ghoul must have heard some of the raw desperation in her voice because she paused and didn’t yell any more obscenities. She slowly nodded and started walking toward Don’s body. “I’ve known these guys for years,” she said. “I can’t picture them doing this . . .”

“Ghoul, when they drugged me, they spoke about you! Don said you’d be angry they were doing this to me! Vikker said you needed to get over it, that you, um, were ‘too quick to fight and too quick to trust.’”

“He did, huh?” Ghoul was squatting next to Don, and Juliet saw some lights from an LCD flashing, illuminating the pale flesh of her face.

“You fuckers,” she said in a whisper, but Juliet heard her—Angel had dialed up the gain in her auditory implants to the max. “Juliet, I’m sorry about this. I wouldn’t have let this happen if I’d been with it. Come on, put that gun down. I’ll give you some of Vikker’s shit, then we’ll get you out of here. I’m gonna need to make these two assholes disappear.”

“Really?” Juliet asked, feeling her arms start to relax, hope blossoming in her chest.

“Yeah. They were playing a dirty game, and they lost. Not your fault. Come on, put the gun down, and we’ll go over things,” Ghoul said as she began to stand. Juliet started to relax further, but then she saw the glint of chrome in Ghoul’s hand, and suddenly Angel highlighted, in flashing red circles, the barrel of a fat revolver as Ghoul lifted it toward her.

Juliet yelped and jumped to the side as the pistol flashed with yellow fire, and then she raised the shotgun, finger already fully depressed, and pointed it toward Ghoul. For one painful heartbeat, nothing happened, and Juliet fell toward the dusty gravel, still training the crosshairs on Ghoul, then with a zapping whoosh and a painful buck, the electro-shotgun erupted with white steam, and half a hundred balls of lead flew through the darkness.